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New Scientist Live

Perseid meteor shower to peak this weekend

By David Shiga

This weekend provides one of the year’s best opportunities to see some “shooting stars”. The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night.

Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky. It does not take a large object to produce a visible meteor – most are the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble.

The Perseid meteors are produced by material from a comet called Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the Sun once every 133 years and passed close to the Sun most recently in 1992. The comet sheds debris along its orbit, and it is this debris that creates the Perseid meteor shower when the Earth passes close to the comet’s path every August.

On any clear night of the year, meteors can be seen at a rate of a handful per hour. But during a meteor shower like the Perseids, the rate is a dozen to several dozen per hour.

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Moon shadow

Most meteors will be faint and brief, lasting a fraction of a second. But occasionally a bright one will shine for a few seconds, leaving behind a glowing trail.

The paths of the meteors all point back towards a single point in the constellation Perseus, which gives the yearly display its name. But they can appear anywhere in the sky, so the best strategy is to lie down and stare at as large a patch of sky as possible.

This year, the shower occurs just a few days after Full Moon, which will make meteor spotting more difficult. But you can minimise the problem by watching from somewhere where the Moon is blocked by a tree or a building.

The Perseids are best seen from the northern hemisphere, but a few may be visible slightly south of the equator.